As if imagined in a fantasy world, La Guajira peninsula juts out of Colombia’s eastern Caribbean coast. Located in the country’s north and bordering Venezuela to the east, La Guajira’s topography is lined with the mountains of the Sierra Nevada and the Macuira and Perijá mountain ranges, and a desert which covers the majority of the department (state) and ends on the shores of the Caribbean Sea in Punta Gallinas, the northernmost point of the South American continental mass.

But Guajira’s narrative lacks rain and the last dry season has turned lagoons into deserts of cracked earth, leaving only footprints and exoskeletons, dessicated fish and feathers as the only clue that flamingos and pelicans flew over what was once a place of abundant life and greenery.

In the town of Camarones, Nabio Quebrado Lagoon has shrunken with the drought, leaving a bed of mud covered by a crust of salt and a scarcity of fish, oysters and the chance to take tourists out on the lagoon.

Continuing our journey through Colombia, we head north, to the Guajira peninsula, a deserted department (state) that juts out into the Caribbean sea and borders Venezuela. We will see the municipality of Camarones (literally “shrimp”) and the indigenous community of Loma Fresca (Fresh Hill), both located in the sanctuary of flora and fauna The Flamingos, and the beaches of Mayapo near the state capital, Riohacha. We will then continue north towards the salt mines of Manaure, located near Uribia, indigenous capital of Colombia.